


Seven Fires

by queenoftheslayers



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Therapy is a fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23555242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenoftheslayers/pseuds/queenoftheslayers
Summary: Seven fires of Buffy Summers.*** The Girl needed therapy!
Kudos: 10





	1. HS: Sophomore Year

The Revello Drive House had a firepit in the backyard. Built into the ground, surrounded by white rocks, weathered down by the nearby ocean. Her mother wasn’t keen on them using it when they first moved to Sunnydale, after the fire at her last school, but in the winter, when it was nice enough out, and Buffy wasn’t out patrolling, she and her mother set up a fire. They stayed out until one in the morning, clutching mugs of hot chocolate and wrapped in blankets that would smell like a campfire for days until they were washed. 

Now though, her mother was out of town, and Buffy was home alone. It was three in the morning, and everyone else had gone home. Buffy sat alone, staring into the flames of the fire she had built in the firepit, and holding the once white dress. 

She was wearing gray sweatpants, a Sunnydale High Hoodie, and her hair was up in a messy and wet bun. Despite showering, and scrubbing at herself for almost thirty minutes, she could still feel the master's cold hands, the water and mud of his cave, and the chill of death that radiated from inside her. Her death. 

She had died.

Buffy wanted to cry. Her eyes wanted to water, tear up, and spill over, but she didn’t have the energy. She just lifted the dress and tossed it into the fire. She watched the fire die down for a moment before the dress caught on fire and then roar high. She felt something while watching her dress, something she had wanted so badly, burn away, but she wasn’t sure of the name of what she was feeling. As soon as the smell of her burning hit her, that was when the tears started and she fell to her hands and knees. 

Buffy was alone, crying, long after the dress and firewood burned to nothing but coals and ash. She sat in the cold, tears drying on her face, her breath trying to even out, and watching the sunlight peak up from the horizon. The sky turned light and slowly got brighter. She eventually stood up in the morning light and made her way inside. Walking to the front of the house, she spied her suitcase, waiting for her and her father, to go away for the summer. She just needed to get through the last days of school, and she would be free from Sunnydale for a while. 

She just needed to getaway. 


	2. HS: Junior Year

The roof of her new apartment building had a small personal fire pit sitting on it. It had been off near the edge with some leftover firewood and ashes in it, but no cover. 

Buffy didn’t have a fire for the first couple weeks, just wanting to see if anyone noticed that she had been up on the roof. Her landlord didn’t seem to care, and no one else seemed to use the fire pit or move it anywhere else. 

Buffy, over the course of a few weeks, managed to get enough sticks, large and small, into her apartment from the city. She was sure she looked a little strange, but she didn’t bring many at once. She just wanted to be invisible. 

She had just finished a long shift and was headed home in the dark of night. She wasn’t going to get home until two in the morning. She usually took the afternoon and early evening shifts, but her boss was enough of a scumbag that he didn’t seem to care that a young girl was walking home at night alone, and often kept her late on the weekends. Others tried to make sure that she was okay, but she always waved off their concerns and ducked out before they could try to offer to walk or drive her home. After a few weeks, they stopped asking.

By the time she made it back to her apartment, she had staked two vampires and dodged away from the victims. She was keyed up from the slaying, but instead of wanting to go out again, she dropped her things in her apartment, changed into her sweats, grabbed the lighter and small container of lighter fluid she swiped from work, and headed up to the roof with her bundle of wood from town and her stakes; with Kendra’s stakes.

She created a simple fire, built from her weapon of choice, of course, with only one stake left out. Buffy twirled the twisted wood in her hand before placing it in her lap. She had brought all these stakes with her, knowing she might need them, but now all she wanted was them to be gone. She wanted this responsibility gone. She was so sick of death. Sick of being the chosen one. She hoped that the new slayer would stay far away from Sunnydale and her. 

That way, she might live.


	3. HS: Senior Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Graduation.

Buffy stared at herself in the mirror in her bathroom. She was covered in sweat, ash, and dirt. Her skin was blotchy and red from the work that she did all day. She had spent most of the day with Giles, Willow, Zander, Oz, and Cordelia, just moving all the boxes from the library. Most went into storage, but many went into Giles' care, for him to go home and sort. Buffy offered to help bring them over and unpack, but he declined assistance.

It was still early enough that she hopped in the shower, put her hair in a quick braid, and put on clean clothes before running out the door and making her way across town to the hospital. She sneaked her way through the hospitals, and soon found her way into the private room that Faith was set up in. She stood in the room, just to the side of the closed doorway for a while, before slowly making her way to the bedside, and sitting down. She spent a while staring at any place but Faith, but when she finally did, she felt tears come to her eyes. 

It shouldn’t have been this way, Faith shouldn’t have ended up like this. Buffy could look back and see so many times that things could have been different in their relationship, in their lives together. Faith should be here, she should be the one awake and have been the one that ended the Mayor, saved the town. Buffy reached out slowly, afraid of action from the bed, and picked up Faith’s hand and held in and cried quietly. 

Eventually Buffy was busted by a nurse, telling her that visiting hours were over, and that she could come back the next day. Buffy wiped her tears and nodded, before collecting herself, kissing Faith on the forehead, and headed home. 

When she returned home, she quickly moved up to her bedroom and towards the box she had put on the floor of her bedroom, sitting down next to it and opening the top with her scissors. Inside sat year's worth of Sunnydale High Year Books, spanning back a decade or two. Buffy readjusted her ponytail, and started pulling books out, one by one and carefully cutting out the photos and names of all the students that passed away or disappeared each year. Sunnydale High, the only school with an “In Memoriam” section that was full each year. 

Buffy stayed on the floor for a few hours, carefully working through the process, until she had all the pages that she needed sorted into piles. She put the books back into the box, and the piles of pages in on top. Quickly, she grabbed up the box and made her way down through the house and out into the backyard. She constructed a small fire, and slowly fed it the yearbooks until she had a pile of ash and coals. Carefully, she placed in memoriam pages from all the years that she didn’t attend Sunnydale. She had found a simple Memoriam spell, that even if she couldn’t cast it with an effect, the words should count for something to those in the afterlife. Let them know that they are remembered. 

She waited, smelling the burning wood, the destruction on her skin from the school, and the sweat of the day until the fire was low enough that she could start. 

Each person, faces she knew and didn’t, all the people that she wasn’t able to save, burned away into the night. Jessie, Principal Flutie, Jenny, Mr. Platt, and countless others. 

She wouldn’t ever forget them or that she wasn’t able to save them from this town. 

She hoped whatever goddess or god was listening to her carried their souls to safety.


	4. College: Freshman Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first slayer

Buffy found herself alone the night after the dreams with the first slayer. Willow was over at Tara’s apartment, Xander and Aya were out, Giles was busy, and Buffy wasn’t in the mood to be back at her home with her mother. She had just returned from patrol but was still keyed up, feeling the first slayer burning in her veins days after the spell, Adam, and strange dreams.

Eventually Buffy left her dorm room again, locking the door behind her and walked through campus. She was the only person out for a while, being the middle of the night, and the people of Sunnydale knew to not be out in the dark if they could help it. But college students are college students no matter what hell forsaken town they live in, and of course, there was an end of year fraternity party happening. 

Buffy ghosted through the party, ending up in the backyard, standing by the fire pit, a cup of something in her hands that she wasn’t going to drink. She was too focused on the flames dancing in front of her, the image’s bleeding in from her dreams the other day. She sat on a chair near the fire and ignored the party around her.

The face of Kendra appeared before her, then faded away to another and another and another. It kept going, face after face, of all the women that came before her, all so young, not a grey hair among them. The faces kept flashing faster and faster, speeding through her history until what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. So many young women, stolen youths, cruel deaths, plagued from cruel circumstances. 

Buffy pulled the tarot cards from her pocket, the ones used in the spell, and from her dream. She could feel the magic, dull, on the edge of the cards, and could feel the hands of the first on her. 

“I don’t need these,” she whispered to herself, “I don’t need you. Not now…” She wanted to say not yet, that she didn’t want to use this power, that she would never need it. She couldn’t get the words out.

The power was burning her and she didn’t know how to explain it to anyone. She had read watcher journals, read late into the night, but they were always from the perspective of the old watcher. No input from the slayers. Nothing to help her.

Buffy reached out her hand, the tarot cards and her hand over the fire, hesitating for a moment, before letting them fall down into the fire pit. The cards seemed to hesitate a moment, fighting the fire, before the edges started to curl and burn. Buffy looked out over the fire, and into the nearby tree line, and could almost imagine seeing the first slayer turn her back and move away from her.

She stayed at the fire to watch the cards turn to ash, hoping to feel the power and burn fade away, but on her walk back to her dorm she could still feel the call of the first slayer burning inside her.


	5. Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no pain  
> No fear, no doubt  
> ....

Buffy floated, loved, at peace. She had no worries, pain, concerns, and wants. No fire raged in her. No heat was needed to keep her at bay and stable to the ground. 


	6. After Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too much death.

Buffy stood in the door of the master bedroom of the house, carpet cutter, and plastic bags on the floor near the window. She had sent everyone out, off to school or work. She didn’t want help today, with this. This was her penance, this was her curse; to be the last one standing in a room full of blood. This whole year she just wasn’t enough. 

So today when she woke up, she sent Dawn to school, and bared Xander and Anya from the home until tonight, and collected the tools that she needed to clean and cleanse the home. 

Buffy crossed the room, got onto the floor, and got to work. Cutting and tearing up the carpet, pulling up the blood-soaked parts and setting them aside in a box. After that was done, she continued to rip out the carpet. She spent most of the day cutting and ripping the carpet up and stuffing it into black plastic bags and bringing them to the garbage outside in the alley. 

Finally, she found herself in the backyard, covered in sweat, blood, and carpet fibers. Her hands would heal from the open cuts and sores, her knees would heal from the rug burn, and her fingernails would heal and grow back, but she feared her heart was going to burn away and never heal. Feared that her tears wouldn’t stop today.

She had lost too much in the past two years. Dawn had gone through too much in her time as a person, the only life she knew and could remember, and Buffy hadn’t made it easy this year. Everything had been falling apart and she was utterly broken. 

Buffy pulled another piece of blood-soaked carpet from the plastic bag next to her, and put it into the fire, the flames catching and burning away the remains of the murder of the loving witch who wanted to make the rest of the world a better place; of the woman who didn’t judge her in the last year. Not when her other friends did; when her best friends she thought of as family doubted and judged her, and didn’t understand what they did to her and what she was still going through. 

She stood alone in silence, the only sounds of low traffic and fire crackling to keep her company, pulling the last pieces of the bloody carpet into the fire. She stood and watched the carpet burn and fall away as ash, the fumes and ash blowing away into the wind. She spent the time watching the fire die out, sending silent wishes and prayers to Tara. 

Buffy turned back to the house, more work to be completed before stopping. To the ground, the sky, the world, she whispered, “She didn’t deserve this fate. It’s wrong and bullshit.” 

She headed into the house, and back up to the master bedroom and bathroom, where she readied her cleaning supplies. Hissing in pain, she scrubbed the floor, her hands raw inside her gloves, but she didn’t stop, not until all the blood was gone from the baseboards. It had to be ready for Xander, as he would be over soon to start the carpet relaying.


	7. The Next Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

Buffy sat on the weapons chest that Xander made for her a few years ago. It was one of the only things that she got out of Sunnydale before the town became a crater and then became a lake. They had gone a few weeks ago and looked out over the water, the blue sky shining, reflecting back at them. Dawn had brought flowers to lay at the edge, and Buffy wandered over to the state workers that were on break from constructing the memorial of those that were lost in Sunnydale. 

Now she was in her new home in the middle of nowhere. Retirement, Faith called it. Colorado Springs, CO. Of course it was near the military, but there were no monsters. Part of her decision to come here was that she wanted to keep an eye on the strange thing under the mountain, the other part was that she didn’t want to patrol nightly anymore; she was so tired. 

She stared at the fire pit that was installed in her new backyard, sitting empty and cold. There was nothing left to burn; everything she owned was gone. All she had left was her sister, the wooden chest, the cross on her neck from Angel, and a photo album of her mother, sister, and her friends. 

Buffy looked up at the sound of her sister's feet coming to the backdoor and turned to watch Dawn walk over to join her sitting on the chest. 

“How’s the new furniture in your room?” Buffy asked quietly.

Dawn smiled a little, “Different, but a bed is a bed. We should get picture frames and copies of pictures tomorrow. Plus I saw this dinner in town that I think we should stop at; it’s close to the bus stop for here and school, cause I was thinking that I could see if they have any jobs available. I know we have money, but normal, right?" Dawn looked so small and young in that moment, asking, "This is our chance to be normal, right?”

“Normal… never thought I would get that.” Buffy gave Dawn a small, but happy smile. “That is what we are doing next. Normal.” 

Buffy put her arm around Dawn and leaned over to kiss her forehead, at which Dawn closed her eyes and relaxed into Buffy. 

Normal, Buffy thought, that was an adventure she was okay with. 


End file.
